Cruise vacations

[phreezee]

Cruise with Disney and drop your annoying kids off at the Kids Club. They have an entire team to play with them and feed them and you can go off on excursions or just do your own thing. There's a bracelet system for gated check in and check out for safety.

I've done 3/9 cruises with Disney and they were the best even though they weren't mega ships. RCL was best of the rest, NCL and Carnival are about the same.

[npham]

I figured most of you guys were doing this: https://www.ritzcarltonyachtcollection.com/

[arcticcat522]

Anyone cruise Princess? Wife and I did half our honeymoon on thier new ship Majestic Princess(at the time) and thought it was great. Nothing to compare it to though. Have a family culruise this Nov. On the Marti Gras. Hope the roller coaster is functioning.

[Nufy]

Did a Mediterranean cruise last September...
Barcelona / Marseilles, and 3 ports of call in Italy.

Was awesome. Spent most of the ship time in the adult section so avoided the rug rats completely.

Also go to the dining room for breakfast instead of the Main mess hall...or what ever they call it on your ship.

We were with Royal Caribbean.

Get the drink package as well...Make it a daily challenge...LOL

I won.. most days.

[RX_EVOLV]

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Kids on cruise = Disney above all others. If you can swallow the price tag, Disney will set a standard of service for the family that no other company will live up to. At least that was our experience, to the point where the wife and I would consider sailing with them even without the kids.

Yeh wife wants to try a Disney cruise but the price premium is staggering. Easily doubled of any of their competitors. Even an Alaska cruise it can be >$10K for a Balcony room.

That said, we are very curious will try it one day when the kids are old enough to appreciate all things Disney like Star Wars and MCU, unless we come across some crazy last minute deals.

[msommers]

As someone who has never been on a cruise and has a hard time imaging the appeal, what do you do most of the time and what keeps you coming back?

[pheoxs]

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As someone who has never been on a cruise and has a hard time imaging the appeal, what do you do most of the time and what keeps you coming back?

Same as a regular resort more or less. Pool, Bar, Eat, Sun, Activities. But the ship moves so then it dumps you in random locations to do excursions or explore a town then you hope back on and it takes you to the next place. Benefit is you can see a bunch of countries with less travel time on your part.

[Swank]

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Get the drink package as well...Make it a daily challenge...LOL

I won.. most days.

Got the premium drink package, and it was worth it! We averaged 17 drinks/day each on ship (the app tracks it), hit almost $3000 US each by the end. All too often we were getting triple Grey Goose on the rocks at the martini bar (counts as one drink). This is on top of drinks during tours. Thank God for pictures, otherwise "we were on a cruise?!?!" hahaha! I think the drink package was ~$700 per person CAD. If one person in the room gets a drink package then everyone else in the same room HAS to.

Side note, can someone fax me a spare liver?

[haggis88]

I was on Jewel Of The Seas last year, went from Orlando down to Aruba

The engineering section was most of what I saw...a huge eyeopener for me on a LOT of things

Officers quarters are very nice also

It didn't make me want to rush back onto a cruise though...it would need to be an unbeatable deal for me to do it again

Aruba is a cool as fuck island, would go there again for sure

[Swank]

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As someone who has never been on a cruise and has a hard time imaging the appeal, what do you do most of the time and what keeps you coming back?

- Going from -30 to +30 weather.
- The luxuriousness.
- 1.5 staff members to tend to anything you want 24/7.
- Waking up in a different place every day with the option of staying on ship or wandering the port or doing a tour at the port that you can't do at home.
- Top notch comedy/magic/theatrical shows included (performers from America's got talent, Britain's got talent, Last Comic Standing, etc) on stages that compete with Vegas shows, all thanks to your dedicated entertainment director. Mike Gaffney & Matt Johnson for example.
- Audience participation events at pool side or in the clubs/bars (name that tune, trivia, curling, yes or no, etc).
- The view of ocean or land depending on the day.
- The people you meet who also love cruising.
- Delicious buffet to high end dining (I think our ship had 9 different restaurants).
- Never bored, always have too many options of what to do, FOMO can apply.
- All the old people make me look fit AF. Plenty of cougars to choose from if that's your thing.

Top 3 experiences:

We did exactly this



And this



Not us but same thing

[RX_EVOLV]

Drink packages are alot more expensive now.

On our last cruise it would've been ~$1000 per person if we prebook it ahead of time. More if we get on the boat. Easy to get your money's worth on a sea day, but imo a bit harder when it's port day and you are off the boat from 8am to 5pm. But we go with kids so not exactly partying 24/7.

Another thing we love is the Thermal Spa on some of the boats. It was absolutely amazing being able to spend the entire day roaming Florence (for example) just to get back on the boat and spend a couple hours relaxing in the therapy pool/sauna/steam shower/heat lounger. Those are always worth the $ IMO.

[ExtraSlow]

Some of those benefits also apply to a good all-inclusive resort in the tropics.

- Going from -30 to +30 weather.
- The luxuriousness.
- 1.5 staff members to tend to anything you want 24/7.
- Waking up in a different place every day with the option of staying on ship or wandering the port or doing a tour at the port that you can't do at home.
- Top notch comedy/magic/theatrical shows included (performers from America's got talent, Britain's got talent, Last Comic Standing, etc) on stages that compete with Vegas shows, all thanks to your dedicated entertainment director. Mike Gaffney & Matt Johnson for example.
- Audience participation events at pool side or in the clubs/bars (name that tune, trivia, curling, yes or no, etc).
- The view of ocean or land depending on the day.
- The people you meet who also love cruising.
- Delicious buffet to high end dining (I think our ship had 9 different restaurants).
- Never bored, always have too many options of what to do, FOMO can apply.
- All the old people make me look fit AF. Plenty of cougars to choose from if that's your thing.

The excursions are probably about as easy from a resort or a cruise, but obviously one area
The dining options should be good, and usually there's a town nearby with good food if you want that kind of restaurant
Probably "less" to do at a resort overall, but the bigger/better ones have great entertainment teams as well.
View never changes though, unless you walk from one side of the resort to the other, I guess.

[shakalaka]

The hack we learnt from some verteran cruisers at our last one; since you are allowed 1 bottle of wine per person on board, refill that shit with whatever you want and re-cork/re-seal it (easy enough) and have a good day. But even then it'll just be one bottle so if it's a 7 day or more cruise, it isn't going to last much. On board all-inclusive booze packages are quite stupidly priced and even then I thought they had a maximum of 5 or 10 drinks per day per person. I thought liability reasons but maybe it was just that particular company.

[Swank]

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On board all-inclusive booze packages are quite stupidly priced and even then I thought they had a maximum of 5 or 10 drinks per day per person. I thought liability reasons but maybe it was just that particular company.

No max for us, or not enforced at least. You learn pretty quickly who the good free-pourers are. They wouldn't serve shots but they would serve triples neat

[Nufy]

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No max for us, or not enforced at least. You learn pretty quickly who the good free-pourers are. They wouldn't serve shots but they would serve triples neat

The robot bartender had no limits.

[phreezee]

Get private drivers for your port day like a pro. Those excursions booked onboard add up fast, and it ends up cheaper while still hitting the same attractions. Takes more planning and effort but well worth it.
Being driven all over Athens in a Mercedes in was one of my best cruise experiences.

[killramos]

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I figured most of you guys were doing this: https://www.ritzcarltonyachtcollection.com/

Sharing a yacht? That’s cute

[sexualbanana]

I went on Virgin Cruiselines 2 Christmases ago. It was my second time on a cruise (first one was a family Disney cruise).

I wouldn't call myself a cruise person, but there were a lot of things I liked about the experience that I would definitely do again.

- Virgin Cruises are adult-only, which is really nice.
- Definitely ate a lot.
- I'm not a drinker, but still had the occasional drink, which is fine with me. At the time (though I think it has changed a little since), Virgin had really generous bonuses for bar tabs and stuff. Wasn't my thing, but there were definitely people who went absolutely HAM because they had such big bar tabs to spend.
- Personally, I liked sea days more than port days. I just liked the pace of waking up whenever I want and having food and activities on-board without having to work too hard for it.
- Even though I prefer sea days, at least the ports provide an alternative. I've found that after 3-4 days, I start to get bored at an all-inclusive.